Lydia is now fifteen weeks old! (This summary is posted late because my blog seemed to be down.)
Sleep
I know last week I said that I was going to try to encourage her to fall asleep on her own. I haven’t done any of that, and I’ve somewhat retreated from that intention. I talked to my friend Dee (who’s had four kids), and she’s never tried to influence their sleep habits and it’s always worked out fine and they’ve moved towards more adult sleep patterns over time. I do hear plenty of stories about kids who don’t seem to do that, but I also know people are more likely to be vocal about sleep patterns that aren’t working.
It does seem to still be true that she’s not happy being up and about in the evenings, so I’m going to try to limit doing that with her. I also do still have time that I had blocked out on my schedule to try to figure out her sleep better. Regardless of sleep, I think I’m going to try to keep that time pretty unscheduled. That will be nice for me!
Eating
Not much more to report here. I’ll say more about this below, but Lydia didn’t like our plan to get babysitters, so I didn’t really pump more.
Her eating patterns seem pretty similar.
Elimination Communication
No real success with the mini potty yet. I have tried a few times, but she doesn’t seem to be a fan. Sometimes she’s refused to go in it, but then gone in the sink afterwards. Sometimes it can work to put the potty in the sink, but even that is sort of iffy from her perspective, it seems. I’ll keep offering it occasionally.
She’s also not crazy about random toilets that I take her to when we’re out, but will sometimes use them anyway, especially to pee. Sometimes I’ll get her to do it by nursing her at the same time so she calms down. She doesn’t seem to like to poop when we’re out much at all, which I’ve heard of in adults but wouldn’t have expected from a baby. I guess she’s not as relaxed?
Nighttime EC strategy continues to be confusing. Lydia will go a pretty big stretch at the beginning of the night without having to pee. But then, before she has to bee she will squirm and squirm, and want to suck. However, she has reacted pretty badly to me trying to potty her at this point. So usually I’ll just wait until she actually pees, then change her. Because she also has more fussy sleep when she’s wet. It seems as though she’s more amenable to being potted after around 7:00 or so (sun is starting to come up), and will sometimes go right back to sleep afterwards.
Babywearing
Still good. She gets heavier bit by bit, but I’m probably getting gradually a bit stronger too. She loves sleeping in carriers, and that’s usually how she takes her naps. Recently though, she’s been falling asleep directly on the bed at night more often.
Motor Skills
She’s rolled from front to back a few more times recently she definitely hasn’t forgotten how.
She can roll from her back to her side, but has never gotten to her stomach from there.
She can also squirm quite a bit, so if I put her down on one part of her playpen, she get over to the other end of it. Her toys also end up very far from where they started, kind of all over the room, which I’m pretty impressed by.
Personality/Other
She hasn’t been quite as drooly this week, I think because she’s been swallowing more of the drool. Maybe a little less fussy than last week, but hard to know.
She seems to have separation anxiety, or something similar, anyway. We tried leaving her with babysitters a few times, but it didn’t last long because she got upset. The first time, I had a hard time believing she wanted us specifically, since I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen until around six or seven months, but it wasn’t subtle. She would calm down noticeably when Will or I entered her visual field, and then immediately more when we held her. It would be nice to have some babysitting sometimes, so our current plan is to spend time with the people who would be watching her all together, letting them hold her until she starts to get upset, comforting her, and trying again.
On a happier note, I think she’s leveled in playing! The other night she played pretty much continuously in her playpen for a very long time–I think more than half an hour. I don’t think she’s even been that interested in her stuff for more than ten minutes or so before. It was very fun to watch, and one of my most fun parenting moments so far.
Watching her play and play like that was also a nice reminder than babies learn new stuff totally on their own, and she’s changing really fast no matter what I do one way or the other.
Me
I was looking forward to having some babysitter time, but it’s also not that hard to accept that it won’t work yet. Will does quite a bit of childcare, so I do get time to do some of the things I like to do that it’s hard to do with a baby.
I’ve also been feeling more well rested lately, which is really nice, even if I’m not sure why I am. I don’t really track these things, but I think I’ve been getting about the same amount of sleep, and that Lydia has been feeding about the same amount (a lot!) during the night.